​Water, water everywhere….  That was going to be the title of my next to last SommCom review session on wine, water, and food pairing, but alas I could not think of anything worthwhile to write.  So, I happily decided to go straight to a very, very interesting presentation on wines from a unique region of Chile, Itata.

Itata has a lot in common with Southern California.  Itata was where the first Spanish mission in Chile was established, just as San Diego was where the first Spanish mission in California was established.  If you have a mission, you have a church.  If you have a Catholic church, you need wine for the Mass.  Hence, winemaking in Chile began in Itata, much as winemaking in California began in San Diego.  As in California, winemaking moved north, and Itata, like San Diego, was left far behind in wine production.  Both areas seem to be seeing a resurgence of sorts in their wine industry.
Itata is located in the south of Chile.  It is a thin strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and the mountains, about 20 km wide and 100 km from north to south.  Not unlike San Diego, the weather is dominated by the nearby mountains and cold ocean.  Unlike San Diego, however, Itata has enough rainfall for the vineyards to dry farm.  This is a relatively poor area, unlike San Diego, so vineyards have little in the way of modern equipment, and oak barrels are not commonly used.  Most vineyards consist of old, untrellised vines. It is doubtful that the vines ever see anything in the way of modern pesticides, fungicides, or the like.  The wealthier growers might be able to afford a tractor.  There is no effort to make complex, high-quality wines, even if such expertise were available.  Hence the product is quite simple, inexpensive, and, as it turns out, quite drinkable.

​We tasted four wines made from different grapes, three of which were quite nice.  The best white wine was made from a grape labeled Torrontes.  At some point in the history of Argentine wines Muscat of Alexandria was crossed with other grapes to produce three new varieties, all falling under the general name Torrontes:  Torrontes Riojano, Torrontes Sanjuanino, and Torrontes Mendocino.  I’m not sure if the Itata wine growers know which one they are growing.  See more on this wine below.

​The Pais grape was brought to Chile by the Spanish and used to make wine for the church.  It is related to California’s Mission grapes.  Makes for a very easy-to-drink wine.

The light red wine we tasted is made from the Cinsault grape.  ​Cinsault is a minor blending grape from Bordeaux.  It is rare to find Cinsault used to make a varietal, but they do and it goes down well.

​Thus ends my review of SommCom.  Stay tuned for more adventures….

​On the Tuesday morning of SommCom I came prepared for the cold – thermal underwear, corduroy pants, heavy wool sweater, parka….   I didn’t wear a ski mask, of course – afraid I might be mistaken for ICE. 
The first session was one I was most interested in – the wines and wineries of San Diego County.  Very, very informative session, particularly if you have an interest in the more technical side of the wine industry.   And spend many afternoons at said wineries….
The most significant part of the presentation was given by Alysha Stehly.  She brought representative samples of San Diego County soils and the picture below.  It is a map of San Diego County where each color represents a different soil type.  As you can see, there are an awful lot of them.  In French wine terms, soil type is a part of what they call terroir, the set of conditions that affect the taste of the wines regardless of grape variety.  Climate, rainfall, and terrain are part of terroir as well, and we have plenty of diversity in those as well.  As a result, there is probably an ideal terroir in San Diego County for just about every grape variety except those that prefer cool climates. 

​I have listed on this website over sixty grape varieties that are grown and made into varietal wines in Southern California.  Turns out, there are about forty more grape varieties not on my list.  Now you know why.  Few if any wine growing regions come close to this variety.  A great example of the range of grapes is shown below, a white wine from Granite Lion Winery.  It is made from three grapes that you probably never heard of….

​Mia Marie’s winemaker, Kiara Boccia-Fenlason is making red wines using a process developed in the Beaujolais region of France, carbonic maceration.  For those of you who are bored by technical details, suffice it to say that the process produces a nice wine with very low tannin levels, one that is ready to drink.  We tasted her Merlot made this way, and it was nice, and she is also producing wines made from Tempranillo and Syrah grapes this way.  See the picture below for more details, and if this might bore you, skip the paragraph that follows.

​Carbonic maceration, as noted above, comes from the Beaujolais region of France where the red grape is Gamay.  The process entails putting the uncrushed grapes in a sealable container and replacing the air with carbon dioxide.  When you do this, something rather strange happens:  the sugar in the grapes turns to alcohol without the benefit of any yeast!  During this process, the tannins in the skins and seeds, and the dye molecules in the skins, are extracted, just as in normal fermentation processes.  Wine tannins have low solubility in water and high in alcohol, whereas the opposite is true for the dye molecules.  As the non-yeast fermentation results in a very low alcohol level, 1-2%, tannin levels are minimal without loss of dye molecules, i.e. the wine is red.  Eventually, the skins give way and the yeast on the outside of the skins converts the rest of the sugar to alcohol.  The tannins do not dissolve into the wine, so one has a light-bodied wine with nice color that is ready to drink immediately after fermentation is complete.  While most of the Beaujolais are aged in oak after fermentation, the first wines available in France from a given vintage year are made without oak aging, the Beaujolais Nouveau.  It should be noted that there is a trend in Beaujolais to make Gamay wines the traditional way, with hopes of producing a product that rivals their neighbor’s.  Their neighbor is Burgundy, and the grape they make wine from is Pinot Noir.  Good luck competing with them….
We tasted four wines:  the two mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, a rosé from San Pasqual Winery (an urban winery with a couple of tasting rooms in the city), and the red wine at the back of the picture shown below.  It is a very unique wine.  You see, a long, long time ago San Diego was a backwater port.  The sailors who visited the port had little money to spend so had no interest in fine wines.  Fortunately, there was a winery that catered to them in San Diego County:  Bernardo Winery.  To meet this demand they produced a pseudo-port wine.  They distilled some wine to a high alcohol level then mixed it with grape juice, giving them a concoction that was very drinkable but also could survive a sea voyage.  It is this ‘port’ that Ross Rizzo, Bernardo Winery President and Master Vintner, provided for this session.  It was surprisingly good.  Simple, but with very little of the brandy taste I really do not like.  By the way, this oldest winery in the county began operation in 1889 and has been in the Rizzo family for almost a century.